Alone in a big four bedroom house is how I spend my days, working in Janet’s old room which has been converted into a makeshift office. I’ll be here at least another month, and the silence, after 7 years of living with roommates, is beautiful. All I have to do is look after the pool and keep the place clean should one of the real estate agents want to drop in suddenly with prospective buyers. It seems easy, and it was – until the most horrible smell infiltrated the top floor. We’re talking corpse-worthy, here. First 48, vaporub under the nostrils type smell.

The main realtor, Linda, is in constant contact with my mother who is 4 hours away at the lakehouse. Linda and my mother are convinced I’m going to leave a granola bar wrapper out, thus blowing a sale. So I am doing everything in my power to prove them wrong. So far so good. Needless to say, a gag-worthy, phantom stench is definitely a left turn away from the goal. I checked everywhere – the garbage, the cat litter, under the beds, the toilet tank, all of the cupboards, the attic. I settled on “dead animal” and started combing the vents and any other small place not in my pants that something small could get lodged in and then pass away.

I can obviously only drag this tale out for so long. I discovered the source of the stench while changing Boss’ food and water dish. I thought it was strange that he hadn’t been eating, but would never have assumed that some water from one half of his double dish got over onto the food side and created a nasty chemical reaction that would have make Louis Pasteur retch. It was retched, black and dark green and took only 3 days to manifest.

As soon as the offending goop was flushed – voila. The stank was gone, just like that, and I was able to leave for the weekend, secure in the knowledge that my house-sitting rep was safe. That is until I got home and found the pool had stopped filtering in my absence. You haven’t lived until you’ve stuck your hand in to a skimmer full of dead baby mice up to the wrist. But that is another story. That I may masturbate to later.